William Trevor

Heavy Metal heroes and avengers from around the globe unite behind the legendary god of metal thunder, Thor, on this epic new studio album! Features guest performances by W.A.S.P.’s Chris Holmes, Raven vocalist John Gallagher, Soilwork singer Björn Strid, Danko Jones, Anthrax’s Neil Turbin, Ross “The Boss” Friedman and lots more! Thor will be co-starring in a feature-length action movie “Pact Of Vengeance,” which will feature music from the new album! Thor & company are set to launch several shows and festivities celebrating Thor’s 39th sutdio album and an astounding 50 years of metal mayhem!

When EMI made their various sonata and concerto recordings with Claudio Arrau in the 1950s, his reputation in this country was at its zenith; and rightly so, to judge from much that their five-CD Beethoven Edition has to offer. Later, a reaction set in, something that first became apparent in these pages in 1963 as Arrau, now a Philips artist, embarked on his cycle of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.

ABC's debut album combined the talents of the Sheffield, U.K.-based band, particularly lead singer Martin Fry, a fashion plate of a frontman with a Bryan Ferry fixation, and the inventive production style of former Buggles member Trevor Horn and his team of musicians, several of whom would go on to form the Art of Noise. Horn created dense tracks that merged synthesizer sounds, prominent beats, and swaths of strings and horns, their orchestrations courtesy of Anne Dudley, who would follow her work with the Art of Noise by becoming a prominent film composer, and who here underscored Fry's stylized romantic lyrics and dramatic, if affected, singing. The production style was dense and noisy, but frequently beautiful, and the group's emotional songs gave it a depth and coherence later Horn works, such as those of Yes ("Owner of a Lonely Heart") and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, would lack. (You can hear Horn trying out the latter band's style in "Date Stamp.") Fry and company used the sound to create moving dancefloor epics like "Many Happy Returns," which, like most of the album's tracks, deserved to be a hit single.

This is the follow up to the extremely popular album Best Classics 100. The 6 CDs are themed differently from those in the first album and cover 'Spectacular Classics', 'Eternal Classics', 'Romantic Classics', 'Instrumental Classics', 'Nostalgic Classics' and 'Favourite Encores'.